


Some Scenes from the Rumor, Irrelevant to the Regime

by AuroraCloud



Category: The Strange Case of Starship Iris (Podcast)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Background Relationships, Board Games, Computers, F/F, Fluff, Food, Gen, Humor, Missing Scene, Mostly Gen, Other, Season/Series 01, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28137600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/pseuds/AuroraCloud
Summary: As far as we know, audio records of these scenes exist in the IGR archives along with the rest of the material related to the Strange Case of the Starship Iris, or, as it's also known, the Rumor Case. They have been tagged with the keywords "irrelevant" or "extremely irrelevant" by the agents investigating the case.Moments of less-than-politically-relevant life aboard the Rumor. Or: Violet gets a taste of fusion kitchen Rumor style; Arkady vs. software acting up for no good reason; Krejjh likes animal videos; and a game night on the Rumor.
Relationships: Brian Jeeter/Krejjh, Violet Liu/Arkady Patel
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Some Scenes from the Rumor, Irrelevant to the Regime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BooksAsFurniture](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BooksAsFurniture/gifts).



_As far as we know, audio records of these scenes exist in the IGR archives along with the rest of the material related to the Strange Case of the Starship Iris, or, as it's also known, the Rumor Case. They have been tagged with the keywords "irrelevant" or "extremely irrelevant" by the agents investigating the case._

## Dinner

Sitting down to dine with the crew of the Rumor still felt awkward to Violet, but so had the occasions on the Iris when she and other crew members had happened to have their meals at the same time. On the Rumor, at least, everyone made an effort to be nice to her and include her in the conversations. Even Arkady, despite the earlier frostiness of their interactions. (Violet reminded herself that this did not endear the First Mate Patel to her in any way or constitute forgiving of being lied to.)

But everyone else knew each other so well, and she hadn’t started out her stay aboard the Rumor with the best of terms. So, she was going to do her best to become friendlier with all of them.

She was, for example, not going to stare at the food as Brian brought it to the table and loudly squeak: “What’s that?”

Although, in fact, she did do exactly that.

“It’s, uh,” and Brian said an unfamiliar collection of syllables. “It’s a Dwarnian dish. Well, kind of,” he added, glancing at Krejjh by his side. “I’ve had to adapt it quite a bit. We can’t get all of the ingredients in human ports.”

“And some of them aren’t compatible with the human digestive systems and we would die”, Sana said.

“That, too,” Brian said pleasantly. “But this is Dwarnian food that we all can eat. Fusion kitchen, if you like.”

“That’s such a strange little word,” Krejjh mused. “Fusion. _Fuuuu-zhon_.” 

“Do you often eat Dwarnian food?” Violet asked, looking at Sana filling her plate with the the very interesting-coloured… stew, maybe?

“Usually, we just eat whatever is easy and accessible in space,” Brian said. “But I try to make sure we eat foods from everyone’s culture at least once a month, if we can. Today happened to be the Dwarnian day. Hope it’s not too strange for you.”

“No, it’s fine,” Violet said, braver than she felt. She was no stranger to trying out unusual foods from different cultures, but there had been a lot of new things in the past few days. “I want to get to know Krejjh’s culture, now that we’re crewmates.” 

It was probably the right thing to do, as Brian’s face lit up with a bright smile. “We should see which favourite foods from your culture we can make on board.”

“I suspect we won’t be able to reproduce my Dad’s dumplings here. But I’ll think of something.” Violet took a deep breath and bravely loaded some food onto her plate. If she had survived all her crewmates dying in a government conspiracy, travelling aboard a spaceship outrunning an explosion, and joining a smugglers’ crew, she could survive this. Easily.

“Careful, it’s a little bit spicy,” Brian said.

Moments later Violet was desperately trying not to cough out her mouthful of food.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to spices – she just wasn’t used to whatever _this_ was.

“Crewman Jeeter,” Krejjh said and handed a milky drink across the table to Violet. “I think Science Officer Liu discovered the,” another Dwarnian word that Violet couldn’t focus on hearing it. 

“How much of it did you put in this time?” Arkady asked. She looked concerned, which only made Violet more embarrassed.

Brian winced. “I think I may have forgotten we have a crew member who’s not used to it yet. Sorry, Violet.”

“It’s – it’s all right”, Violet said, taking a swig of the drink which thankfully didn’t taste very different from an Earth vegetable milk. “Just – give me a moment – I’ll be – fine.”

Brian fixed an amused look on her. “Sure, dude. If you say so.”

## Software Problems

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Arkady buried her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes, blocking out the irritating blinking light of the screen in front of her. “That’s five times I’ve restarted the system and it’s crashing on the same. damn. thread. For _no fucking reason_.”

She briefly contemplated the option of coding new software for the Rumor from the scratch before returning to stare at the endless rows of system data and error codes. “Come on, you piece of shit, show me a line of code that’s actually relevant here. Why. can’t. you. do. a simple task?”

“What’s wrong?”

Arkady jolted in surprise, not expecting to hear anyone answer. The computer didn’t talk back to her like it did to the rest of the crew. She had disabled the voice functions for updates because the last thing she needed now was the excessively cheerful computer voice reading out hundreds of lines of error messages. 

Arkady turned and saw Violet, peeking her head in through the door and looking perplexed. Of course if someone overheard her, it had to be her. Not that it mattered, Arkady quickly added in her mind. She was definitely not developing any inconvenient romantic feelings for this gorgeous, bright and amazingly resilient woman who had zero reason to trust her.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize anyone overheard,” Arkady said, trying to sound professional. “It’s nothing. Just yelling at software. Not that it helps.”

“See, you’re a professional,” Violet said. Was that a slight smile on her face? “You actually know yelling at it doesn’t help. I don’t even get that far.”

“To be fair, when they make computers talk out loud to you all the time, they’re pretty much inviting you to talk back.”

“I don’t hear ELLA talking back to you now.” Violet kept hovering in the doorway. Arkady kind of wanted to invite her into the room, but also kind of not.

“Yeah, I don’t let her when it’s just me. I’m just trying to set up your profile on our system, should be just a few minutes, but this stupid piece of code keeps crashing before it’s complete, and for no reason that I can see. Just… look at this! The same damn thread for the fifth time!” She gestured at her screen.

“I can pretend I understand, if it makes you feel better.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Arkady wondered if she should comment on Violet being friendlier than expected. Better enjoy it while she could, she decided. Not that it mattered. Right. She willed herself to focus back to the matter at hand. 

“Do you need anything?” Violet asked. “I was thinking of making coffee and wondered if anyone else wanted any. That’s why I was coming this way.”

“Nah, thanks, I’m good. Any more of it today, and I’ll get jittery. But you can make yourself a pot any time you feel like. There’ll always be someone who wants it.”

“Okay.” But Violet continued hovering in the doorway. “Uh, anything else I can do to help?”

“Probably not.” A thought of a soft massage ran uninvited through Arkady’s head. She checked it quickly and threw it behind lock and key. Instead, she focused on contemplating whether a sixth restart would make her want to bang her head against the desk. “Hold on, wait a sec,” she said to Violet. “If you’re not in a hurry, you could sit here and listen while I explain it to you. What happens when it crashes.”

“I’m pretty sure that won’t help me understand –“

“No, the point isn’t helping you understand, the point is that when I have to explain the problem to someone who really doesn’t understand tech, sometimes that helps me realize where the problem is.” Arkady turned pleading eyes to Violet. “You don’t need to understand anything. I promise.”

“I… guess, if there’s a chance it helps me get a user account and you can stop swearing at the code, then sure.”

“Thanks, Liu. So, what it’s supposed to do is, simply create a new user account in the list of our accounts. Really simple. But for some reason…”

Violet was really good at sympathetic nodding. Maybe it was the medical doctor experience.

She even had the grace to not be annoyed when Arkady realized in the middle of her explanation that the whole thing was due to an indexing issue several layers deep into the code, probably caused by a glitch in the previous software update, and immediately set to work.

## Cute Animal Videos

“Violet, you’ve got to see this,” Krejjh said with glee almost, but not quite, manic. 

“Krejjh, no,” Arkady groaned. “Don’t you think she’s had enough going on lately?”

“That’s exactly why,” Krejjh said. “They’re relaxing. And she’s a biologist! She’s going to love it!”

“Love what?” Violet asked. She had stopped being suspicious of Arkady, but she was a little resentful of certain inexplicable, lingering feelings that sometimes surfaced in her presence, and so she was determined to act against Arkady’s wishes in the matters where it was safe. At least sometimes.

“You’re from Earth, right?” Krejjh asked. “You must have heard about these cute animals called _others_.”

“It’s otters, dude”, Brian injected, amused. Violet got a feeling this wasn’t the first time he was saying this to them.

“Yeah, yeah. Did you know there are videos where they float on their backs on the water, holding hands!”

“Otters don’t really have hands”, Violet started. 

Before she knew it, she was watching a video after video.

“… And then I found this video where an otter and a dog became friends! Let’s see if I can find it, it’s the cutest thing ever.”

After the otter and the dog being friends, she saw a tiger and a pony growing up together, a sloth and a cat who were inseparable, and several other such relationships. After an interlude consisting of many cases of kittens playing and sneezing (and one remarkable bunny hiccuping), they landed on pictures of Earth cows in fields of flowers.

“Cows! They’re so funny!” Krejjh was almost screeching with laughter, the purple of their face having grown more intense. “Look at that face! Those horns! How can anything like a cow exist?” 

“Um,” was the only thing Violet managed to say. She wondered what the animals on the Dwarnian home planet were like, if cows were the height of strangeness.

It started to seem that Krejjh would never want to move on from cows. Violet decided to take a risk and suggest something new.

“Do you also have videos on cuttlefish?” Violet asked.

“Cuddlefish?”

“Almost. Cuttlefish, actually.”

“Cuddle… fish.” Krejjh shot a bright grin – Violet thought it was a grin - at Brian. “That sounds like my kind of fish, Crewman Jeeter!”

“It sure does,” Brian said, and came closer to wrap an arm around their shoulders. 

“It’s cuttlefish”, Violet said, suspecting she might be trying in vain. “But the point is, they can change their colours. It’s partly camouflage, but not just that. They also talk to each other with colours, in a manner of speaking.”

“That sounds amazing,” Krejjh said, sounding almost enthralled.

“And they’re quite smart, and related to squids,” Violet added triumphantly.

“Science Officer Liu, you’ve got to show me the cuddlefish at once! Computer, open top level folder called ‘Animal videos’.”

“Have mercy on me,” Arkady groaned to nobody in particular.

## Game Night

“I thought you said Space Monopoly.” Violet looked at the extremely mixed collection of markers, cards, and dice spread across the board. “This isn’t Space Monopoly.”

“The board kinda is,” Sana said. 

“Except the bits we scratched out and rewrote,” Arkady added. “Come on, Liu, did you really think we’d play Space Monopoly and let it keep _being_ Space Monopoly? We’re better rebels than that.”

“Also Arkady lost about half of the set in a raid once,” Brian added helpfully. 

“I pride myself on my creativity in means of defense,” Arkady said.

“How do you use a board game as a means of defense in a raid?”

“Like I said, creativity.” Arkady looked unnecessarily smug. “Anyway, the only reason we have the thing in the first place is because Campbell hoisted it on us once when he had a bunch of them and couldn’t sell them to anyone, and Sana was too kind to say no.”

“I thought it might boost crew morale if we’re in a situation where our digital forms of entertainment aren’t available,” Sana said.

“Anyway, we’ve supplemented it with items from other games and… whatever we could think of, really.”

“And we’ve changed the rules a lot,” Brian added.

“Or, in many cases, supplemented them with better ones. For example from our board games,” Krejjh said.

“What are Dwarnian board games like?”

“They involve a lot more poetry recital than ours, that’s sure,” Arkady muttered.

“Hence, superior.”

“So, uh, maybe I should explain the rules to you,” Brian said. “This might take a while… I mean, it takes a while for us to even agree which rules we have this time. Guys, do we need to vote, or can we come to an agreement through discussion?”

“We can,” Krejjh said.

An hour and a half later, Violet wasn’t sure who was winning or what they were even trying to accomplish anymore, but she did know Krejjh had gotten at least five cuddles from Brian, that Arkady was looking smug about her pile of markers and cards, and that they were using every flavour of dice except the 6-sided one.

“How much longer is it before this game finishes?” she asked.

“Not much longer for you,” Arkady said. “I’m about to clear you off completely.”

“That sounds… fine.”

“I do think we should have gone for the rule set 6B,” Sana said. “That one rarely goes on for over an hour, and it’s a little easier to follow.”

“But it’s nowhere near as fun!” Krejjh wailed. “Accounting for the atmospheres and gravities of the planets makes it much more realistic and interesting.”

“How did you even get that system?” Violet asked with a weary sigh.

“Probably from an old edition of Definitely Not Colonialist Settlers of Fomalhaut that I had on my memory drive,” Brian said. “But we changed it a little.”

“Just be glad we didn’t invoke the ‘young volatile solar system’ setting,” Arkady said with a grin.

“How much longer is it before the system update finishes?” Sana asked.

“Maybe a little over an hour.”

“Then we might still have time for another game!” Krejjh said. “Now that Science Officer Liu has learned the rules, it’ll be so much fun!”

Violet only groaned.

“I’m afraid the only other board game we have that doesn’t require our computer systems is an edition of Trivial Pursuit from the 2160s,” Brian said. “How much fun that is depends a lot on how fresh your memories are on 30-year-old Lunar soap series, and winners of the 2162 Jovian and Beyond League of 0.5-g basketball.”

“Liu, he’s not even exaggerating.”

“We really need to stock up,” Brian said. “Get some kind of fun closed-spaceship mystery or something.”

“Maybe this is enough board games for one afternoon,” Violet said, tossing a 12-sided die and moving her marker three steps forward. “Couldn’t we just… sing?”

“We never did get through all the verses of Whiskey in the Jar,” Arkady mused. “Also, Liu, you owe me six more iron meteorites. Pay up.”


End file.
